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THE CURSE OF BANNONISM

Day: September 12, 2017

Trump’s Special Advisor and Puppeteer

When a president leaves office, they usually create a library to house the papers and books that played a major role in the shaping of their term. With Donald J. Trump, we won’t need a library, because he doesn’t read books. His legacy will simply be a building with pictures of people who had his ear, TV screens playing Fox News broadcasts and digital displays of pages from right-winged web sites.

When I watched the Charlie Rose interview with Steve Bannon on CBS’ Sixty Minutes, I was first disappointed that they would give him such a powerful platform. As the program commenced, however, little bombs of truth started to penetrate my frontal lobes. It became very clear that Bannon was the biggest influence on the 45th President and Bannon’s destructive dogma clings to Trump.

I have long said that Team Trump has no concern for political parties. The Donald is neither Republican nor Democrat. He’s a reactionary personality who believes that his charisma can carry him through any challenge. The flaw in Trump’s thinking is the belief that people like him. Bannon in the interview actually made that same observation. So, Bannon is allowed to critigue the President.

Steve Bannon, clearly not a likeable person, propels his elitist and subversive views in everything he says. He opens by taking a shot at the Grand Old Party, accusing them of trying to nullify the 2016 election. This “civil war” he is flaming is bad for the party in power. Here is an important area of focus. Bannon says the GOP is trying to thwart Trump’s economic nationalist agenda. No one would argue that our business practices should produce positive results for our country and our people, but there seems to a Bannon agenda, darker and more negative than most Americans envision.

Bannon extends his aggression against certain Republicans with the promise to defeat them. Putting his money (well, other people’s money) where his mouth is means he will be buying ads supporting those running against these “rogue” politicians. He talks about “holding them accountable,” which pushed me to ask the question, “Should the elected official behold themselves to a president or their constituents?” The executive branch didn’t appoint them, they were elected by local counties, cities and states.

Bannon’s reveal that following the election the administration embraced the establishment due to the influence of Jared Kushner, was nullified by his comparison to the way he and Jared dress. Really? Are we in high school? Was Kushner’s desire to work with the “establishment” driven by his wardrobe?

Bannon continued to stir the pot with his opinion that Gary Cohn should have resigned if he didn’t like Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville. I see, you can be critical of things Trump does, but the other guys have to be loyal. Maybe Bannon actually thought he was the President.

The common thread here is that both Gary and Jared are Jewish and would obviously despise anything less than total denouncements on Neo-Nazis. It would be too easy at this point to suggest Bannon exposed a constantly rebuffed anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant grounding by this former Navy officer. But hey, he does mention pearls, limousines and the Hamptons in his put-down of the establishment. This is funny coming from a man who made millions in Hollywood.

It seems draconian to purge someone from the administration because they said the great Orange Leader made a mistake in handling the Charlottesville press conference. Why is Bannon so critical of honesty? He said that “a Darwinian environment for ideas is a positive.” Really, Steve, well Jared and Gary are still there and you are gone. I guess it was the survival of the strongest.

This idea that your “work was done” inside of the White House and you will continue the fight outside of the government is a lame ass excuse for being fired. Bannon called himself a “staffer,” with a kind of snobbish air suggesting that his position was beneath him. You were fired because you were opening your mouth, Bannon, and the White House couldn’t trust you. They are distancing themselves from you now, Mr. Alt-Right winged hooey.

We get that you hate the Bushes, Obama and others who have come before. Your abhorrence and vitriol oozes from our President’s narrow mouth. This concept of saying, in a very forceful declaration, that, “… they know, I know and YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE!” is what Donald Trump uses when he feels confronted. This was a giant poker player “tell” for me. Bannon fed Trump the notion of taking down the Washington Monument and Donald’s little brain spit out that argument. Steve said that the President was taking it to a higher level and he was the only one defending him. Really? You must have a loose screw somewhere because the President, at best, sounded uninformed.

The most repulsive attempt to re-write history by Steve Bannon happened when Charlie Rose suggested that immigrants helped build this country and Bannon replied, “You couldn’t be more, dead wrong. America was built on her citizens.” Okay, so Africans weren’t citizens but did most of the work, yes? Italians, who later became citizens, paved all the brick streets in my hometown. Were they not working and helping to build America? What a stupid thing for Bannon to say.

And when he said that DACA Dreamers will just “self-deport” in six months and there will be no amnesty for their parents either, he made it clear that he is anti-immigrant and that is where the President was getting all his hogwash.

I am sure the 11 million people here illegally would love to help rebuild Houston and Florida for a chance at citizenship. What about that idea, Mr. President?

I don’t care what Steve Bannon says about the Catholic Church. I don’t care about his agenda to make America a whiter place. And I don’t respect his proclamation that the worst modern political decision was the firing of James Comey. If that was so, why didn’t he stop the President? The “I-told-you-so” Bannon dished out was so annoying, with zero enlightenment.

It’s obvious that Bannon was the puppeteer and Trump was the puppet who would say and tweet anything without any logical filter or understanding about the effect of those words. I am glad Steve Bannon is no longer a government employee. He should never have been hired. And, hopefully, the fake news won’t give him any more air time.